Cyber War: Philippines Palace intruded by China’s hackers- Failed

Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda

Chinese hackers were at it again, and this time they attacked the presidential websites.

Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda on Monday (April 23, 2012) said that at 4 p.m. +8 GMT on Sunday, the Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office (PCDSPO) "noticed a significant spike in traffic with malicious URL requests from forged user-agents being channeled to the Official Gazette website (www.gov.ph ), PCDSPO (www.pcdspo.gov.ph ) and to the Presidential Museum and Library website (www.malacanang.gov.ph )."

Lacierda said the spike in traffic from these "forged user-agents'' caused the Palace websites' servers to "momentarily lag.''

"We determined that this was a denial-of-service attack," Lacierda said. "Information gathered through our data analysis indicated that the attack originated from IP addresses assigned to Chinese networks.''

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer or network resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person, or multiple people to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely.

Chinese perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers of the country as revenge after Filipino hackers defaced several china's websites.

One common method of attack involves saturating the target machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. Such attacks usually lead to a server overload. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.

Lacierda said the PCDSPO would maintain its websites, but added that "we can expect temporary disruption of service while the attack is [going on].''

Last week, groups claiming that Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal belonged to China hacked the website of the University of the Philippines.

Filipino hackers hit back, attacking several Chinese websites and stating that the shoal belonged to the Philippines.

The Philippines and China remain deadlocked at Panatag Shoal, with their maritime vessels refusing to budge in a standoff now on its 14th day.